I love living alone. I love my spiky spindly plant in the window, my
too-late-in-the-year pumpkins on the sill, the horn always out on its
stand gently nudging me to think about practicing. I love that if a
spiky spindly leaf falls off my spiky spindly plant, I am the only one
to blame. If I cook a delicious pot of soup, I can let it spill into
the bowl without regard to sharing. If dripping hot wax on my bathtub
in a delightful mid-afternoon bath makes my bathroom look like a cartoon
crime scene, well, that’s my problem. And I take full responsibility
for changing the light bulbs in my ceiling fixture, even if it means to a
night passerby the strange silhouette of a not-so-tall girl standing on
a table pulled to the middle of the room, wrench in hand and wobbling.
I know it’s on me to wait out the bumps in the night – to face the
creaking floorboard, and the possibility of a monster under my bed.
It’s okay! I know I’m a match for it, and a tiny monster heart can be
quickly overpowered by the fierce pride I harbor in mine for making a
new life and a new home.

Photo by Renee Allen

As artists, whether we live by ourselves or not, it is imperative
that we make room somehow in our daily routine to be truly alone, and to
have the space to hear and feel the waves of creative thoughts and
emotions that regularly flood our existence. For many of us, life has a
way of feeling like a constant storm, with our sensitivity to what’s
happening around us bringing turbulence and stirring calls to action.
We aren’t just sympathetic – we are empathetic – for some reason even
situations that are worlds apart from our own experience can cause us to
resonate the same pain or the same joy. We are told we are too
sensitive but we cannot turn it off; every day ideas and images and
intrusions crash upon us and we can be beaten down if we are not
careful. We cannot create if we are clinging to a board in the midst of
the ocean, but we can turn turmoil into provocative commentary and
transform the frothy spittle of the high seas into beauty safe to behold
– if we can just find our way into the eye of the hurricane.

That glimpse of calm in the center – that sunlight and clear sky
before the storm rolls in again – it’s our job to get there, and if
Buddhist thought and numerous other spiritual teachings can point the
way, it would seem that the eye of the hurricane is to be found simply
by stopping and sitting still. We stop, and we sit still, and we find
we are utterly alone. This is not easy, for it is not long before our
thoughts can resume eating up all of our energy, but we strive to
practice it, so that even as the storm swirls around us, we are still
there, still sitting, still breathing in and out, and simply observing
quietly as it goes by.

Whether we do the hardest work of facing ourselves directly through
sitting or engage in taking time for oneself in other ways such as
sneaking off to read, commandeering a swing at the playground, or
disappearing from our usual routine, the biggest obstacle it seems we
face is guilt. In a society hyper-focused on the production of tangible
size extremes – larger house, larger car, smaller waist, smaller dog –
taking time away that doesn’t appear to produce is a capital offense.
Pick up many self-help tomes, and the focus is on soothing our feelings
when someone doesn’t want to spend time with us. We treat alone time as
the most personal insult to our attractiveness and desirability, but it
is as essential to our well being as sleeping and eating. We have to
get over the guilt and steal away from the commotion.

All of what I’ve attempted to process in this post I think is
important to everyone, not just artists. However, most people in our
society attempt to live in a smaller emotional realm. Whether by simple
avoidance, over-reliance on medications, caffeine or other stimulants
and intoxicants, the emotional spectrum of joy and pain for what would
be considered a “normal” person in our society on an average day could
possibly be described as sandwiched between Disneyland and going to the
dentist. Creative types certainly are known to medicate themselves in
many, often illicit ways, throughout the ages, to try to experience a
more “normal” existence. But the reality for most of us is that while
our neighbor over there is mentally at Disneyland, we might be climbing
the clouds on top of Everest, and while he/she is screaming “root
canal!”, we are in the coldest regions of the Arctic, without a coat or
even socks, and definitely with none of them cute penguins.

So how to quell the guilt within the confines of our society? Well,
it seems like we just need to acknowledge all the traveling that we do,
and travel is something that our society seems to respect as a means to
produce. Need to turn down an invitation to a holiday cookie-swap? How
about, “I’m sorry, but I’m doing a teleconference with a team of
Sherpas for my Himalayan climb later this month.” Looking to bow out of
weekly coffee with friends? “I’d love to, but this week I’m practicing
retaining body heat at subzero temperatures and studying the effects of
Hollywood documentaries on penguin self-esteem in preparation for my
trip to the Arctic”. You’ll sound impressive, and of course so
super-productive, no one will dare to question you. Go ahead and pack
your suitcase, and be sure to bring your galoshes and a gale-proof
umbrella. Just don’t leave your apartment.

I am resurrecting this blog after a year of silence -and oh what a
year! I write this on a flight from NYC to Los Angeles, as fitting a
setting as I could possibly find for this topic, for I’m terrified of
flying. Once, when an insensitive flight attendant went on and on
during boarding about how turbulent her arriving flight from Chicago
was, due to storms that I would surely being going through myself on my
way there, I got visibly upset and she said they didn’t want someone
like me on the plane. I walked off and took another flight, humiliated.
But now, here I am. It’s not an uncommon fear, and I’ve worked it out –
careful focusing on my breathing, lavender oil, ginger and rooibos tea,
and a tiny notebook to write in have lent me a quiet dignity about the
whole thing. I don’t want to be here, but I know that I can be, and
that’s enough.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear and resignation. This time last
year, around the time that I began writing this blog, I was in a
grieving process. I was a professional jazz alto saxophonist and
composer yet I was living in the woods, far from any sense of community,
far from my band, far from the heart of the creative improvisational
music scene – I was full of music but shouting at the wind. In my
isolation, I began to feel it was time to compromise my dreams, to erase
some of the flourishes around the edges, the bright and shiny things,
the daring goals that kept me wide-eyed with possibility. I had begun
to resign myself to my dreams being the dreams of Hallmark cards and
Hollywood pictures – big, puffy cumulus clouds that I could reach out
and touch but never hold. Pretty dreams, captivating as they sailed
across glorious sunny skies – but at the moment I connected with their
center, it would become clear that they were made up of simply air and
water, and already evaporating.